Reminiscent of Ren Hoek on a good day, it's...
T H E J U I C E A N D G I N
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Term XLIII, Issue 6 (#225)
Weather outlook:
You can't swing a dead cat in here without hitting bad weather.
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* Contents *
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- Editor's Blurb
- Ongoing Events
- Greg's DTK
- Humour
- General Info
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* Editor's Blurb *
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Hey all
First off let me apologise for the absolutely horrendous spacing issues
with the previous edition of the newsletter. Please rest assured that
the people responsible for this abomination against all that is well and
good have been taken care of.
And instead of babbling on for paragraph after paragraph, let's just
jump to the fun for this week. Er, two weeks. You get the picture,
Chachi.
Until next time,
I'm thinking of a number between 1 and 10, and I don't know why.
Michael (mailto:nutsinfo$yahoo.ca)
And now, the rest of the story...
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* Ongoing Events *
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[See the Event Calendar on the web site for full descriptions.
--Ed.]
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Pool League
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Mondays
http://nutsevents.topcities.com/events/index.html#Monday
Contact: Dave and Michael (pool$solutionsatsource.com)
View the current players' statistics at:
http://nutsevents.topcities.com/events/pool/index.html
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Indoor Rock Climbing
====================
Thursdays
Contact: Andrew (akpallek$hotmail.com)
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* Greg's Deep Thought Korner *
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http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070308.wdetainees07/BNStory/National/home
Goodness gracious. It appears that our latest two governments, Liberal
and Conservative, may be responsible for torturing "detainees". (Don't
call them prisoners. If you call them prisoners, someone might realize
that we're fighting a war, and we prefer to pretend that's not the case.)
Let's take a little sidestep with a simple lesson in morality. When you
take an action, you must accept responsibility for the predictable
consequences of that action. If you hire a paedophile as an elementary
school teacher, it will not be enough to say "I didn't molest the kids.
It's his fault!". If you don't make your children fasten their
seatbelts, you will be responsible for their injuries in the next car
accident. We can not take the route of Pontius Pilate and simply wash
our hands of our own actions.
That is exactly what our governments and Defence Ministers want to do
however. Their logic is that, since we are not "at war", we don't have
to take prisoners. We simply turn over anyone we catch to the Afghan
authorities. Handing prisoners over a hostile, non-democratic
"government" which was installed and is still controlled by the same
people who gave us Gitmo and Abu Ghraib doesn't seem responsible.
But the Right Honourable Minister of Defence Gordon O'Connor assured us
that, "The Red Cross or the Red Crescent is responsible to supervise
their treatment once the prisoners are in the hands of the Afghan
authorities. If there is something wrong with their treatment, the Red
Cross or Red Crescent would inform us and we would take action."
That's kind of funny. Gordon O'Connor was in the military for a long
time, retiring as a brigadier-general to become a lobbyist for the
defence industry. You would think, of all people, that he would know
that the Red Cross does no such thing at all. The Red Cross only reports
on the conditions of prisons to the governing body that has jurisdiction
over those prisons. The Red Cross has always worked this way. There is
no situation in which the Red Cross would report to *Canada* on the
nature of the treatment of prisoners in the *Afghan* prisons.
So he lied. We're turning over prisoners to an unstable, puppet regime,
run by a corporate oil tycoon for the purpose of running an oil pipeline
through what has become a third-world country made up of tiny military
theocracies.
Now let's read the Geneva Convention, Article 12:
"Prisoners of war may only be transferred by the Detaining Power to a
Power which is a party to the Convention and after the Detaining Power
has satisfied itself of the willingness and ability of such transferee
Power to apply the Convention."
You'll note that this is not substantially different from the basic
moral rule mentioned earlier, namely that we are responsible for the
predictable consequences of our actions.
If the Afghan "government", such as it is, is mistreating these
detainees in any way, then Canada and its officials are responsible.
Those officials would then be guilty of war crimes.
Greg.
[Send responses to DTKs or new Editorials to nutsinfo$yahoo.ca]
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* Humour *
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[Forward any good jokes or interesting web sites you see to
nutsinfo$yahoo.ca]
[Disclaimer: The Humour Section may contain content that includes dirty
words, adult situations and jokes that make fun of politicians. Viewer
discretion is advised. --Ed.]
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Geek Joke
=========
Thanks to Greg G. @ Alcatel-Lucent
Werner Heisenberg is driving down a street when he gets pulled over by a
traffic cop.
The cop asks, "Buddy, do you know how fast you were going?"
Heisenberg replies, "No, but I know *precisely* where I am!"
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Two Women Meet In Heaven
========================
Thanks to Linda G.'s Spiritual Jukebox-O-Fun
"Hi! My name is Wanda."
"Hi! I'm Sylvia. How'd you die?"
"I froze to death."
"How horrible!"
"It wasn't so bad. After I quit shaking from the cold, I began to get
warm & sleepy, and finally died a peaceful death. What about you?"
"I died of a massive heart attack. I suspected that my husband was
cheating, so I came home early to catch him in the act. But instead, I
found him all by himself in the den watching TV."
"So, what happened?"
"I was so sure there was another woman there somewhere that I started
running all over the house looking. I ran up into the attic and
searched, and down into the basement. Then I went through every closet
and checked under all the beds. I kept this up until I had looked
everywhere, and finally I became so exhausted that I just keeled over,
had a heart attack and died."
"Too bad you didn't look in the freezer -- we'd both still be alive."
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* General Info *
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Contact the NUTS Committee:
nutsinfo$yahoo.ca
The NUTS Website is:
http://nutsevents.topcities.com/
http://torpedo.ca.newbridge.com/mirror/ (within Alcatel-Lucent)
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